10 BULLETS
Button-mashing casual retro shooters abound. But what makes 10 Bullets special is the paucity of ammunition. You have just ten projectiles to take down as many spacecraft as possible. The trick is to time shots so debris from ships you destroy causes chain reactions. BOOM!
With careful timing, you can obliterate entire fleets of nasties with a single bullet. And because you’re only seldom tapping a key to play, anyone in the office will think you’re mulling over something terribly important. Win!
ABOBO’S BIG ADVENTURE
A glowing, nostalgia-fuelled NES tribute, Abobo’s Big Adventure stars a forgotten face of the 8-bit era: the eponymous Abobo. This muscle-bound hulk from Double Dragon sets out to rescue his son, mostly by punching people in the face.
The visuals are suitably old-school and there are loads of cameos from classic titles. It plays well, too, hurling you back to a halcyon era of beat ’em ups with a smattering of platform action, and a splattering of pixelated gore.
A DARK ROOM
Coming from the same developer as Gridland (also in this list) and supplying a similar ‘thrive ’n’ survive’ challenge, A Dark Room nevertheless takes a very different tack. It’s a text- and menu-driven adventure in which you build up and maintain a successful community in a harsh wilderness. Logistics and supply management are as important as surviving animal attacks, and the adventure can be long and gruelling. Fortunately, you can save progress in your browser and continue at a later date.
ALTER EGO
Alter Ego isn’t pretty – visually or in terms of content. This browser-based remake of an ancient PC game deals with progress through everyday life. It’s as far from The Sims as you can imagine, too – instead of cute little idiots blundering about, you get stark icons and multiple-choice text.
But there’s depth, with a clever (if admittedly slightly conservative) script written by a psychologist, which offers branching progress that could lead you to a happy old age or abruptly dying as a toddler, having necked some bleach found under the sink.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
BOULDER DASH JQ
This unofficial tribute to the 1980s 8-bit classic finds Rockford digging through dirt, grabbing diamonds, and trying to avoid getting crushed by the titular boulders or blown up by explosive underground wildlife.
It looks crude, but the mix of puzzling and arcade action remains highly compelling. It’s notquite a one-to-one conversion – some cave speeds are off, for example, but it scratches a particular retro itch when you’ve a few minutes to spare, and are many miles away from a Commodore 64.
CANDY BOX 2
The beginning of Candy Box 2 is as minimal as can be. A candy counter ticks upwards, and you can eat all your candies, or lob some to the ground. But amass enough sugary treats and Candy Box 2 rapidly goes a bit weird.
What started out resembling a pointless clicker transforms into an oddball RPG. You ‘buy’ a status bar, and then some weapons, before scouring a village and beyond, embarking on epic quests where you get all stabby with an ASCII sword. Because that’s the final bit of bonkers:Candy Box 2 looks like it’s beamed in from a Commodore PET – and it’s glorious.
COMBO POOL
Sort of what might happen if you knocked 2048 into pool, Combo Pool finds you firing coloured balls into a tiny arena. If two match, they merge and upgrade to the next colour, until you eventually knock together a pair of explosive pink balls.
The twist is you’ve an energy bar – keep smashing balls into the arena without combining them and your life quickly runs dry. One for wannabe trick shot masters, then, not least because rebounds considerably ramp up your score.
CONTRE JOUR
Originally a hit on mobile, Contre Jour loses a little of its tactile qualities and immediacy in the browser — but none of its charm. The aim is to guide cycloptic blob Petit to the exit in each single-screen level, manipulating the local environment to do so. You warp the ground to roll him about, swing Petit around via springy ropes, and catapult him across the screen (and, frequently, into painful spikes) using tiny trampolines.
COOKIE CLICKER
It’s hard to know what to make of Cookie Clicker. On one hand, it’s essentially a Skinner box, rewarding players with nothing in particular in return for them clicking like crazy. But it also appears to be an amusing satire on the state of modern ‘idle’ gaming.
Initially, you click and you get a cookie. The more cookies you have, the more power-ups you can afford, including cursors that click on your behalf. Eventually, you’re using time machines to bring cookies from the past, “before they were even eaten”, and converting raw light into cookies with giant prisms, to bring in millions of cookies per second. To what end? Stuff’s not sure, but currently has 509 billion cookies in a really big plastic box if you fancy one.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
CUBE SLAM
Cube Slam is Pong with bears. You get a beautiful 3D playfield, with power-ups and satisfyingly meaty sound effects. As ever, the aim is to get the ball (or, in this case, a cube) past your opponent. It’s not sophisticated, but it is fun.
If you tire of Bob the Bear, you can always try your luck against online friends. And because the game supports webcams, you can even see those annoying people that keep beating you. Want to go meta? Wear a bear mask during play.
DOOM
It’s Doom. What more do you need? Oh, all right, then. Here, in your browser, are the original shareware levels of the FPS classic, which means every monster, every power-up, and every map. For old-hands, it’s a nostalgia-fest. For newcomers, it’s a chance to see what ageing gamers are always banging on about. But remember, no matter how much those Cacodemons or Lost Souls surprise you, you can’t jump. No, really. You actually can’t jump.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
ESCAPE GOAT
This platform game feels like a love letter to 1980s gaming, with its retro-infused visuals and decidedly strange backstory that happens to feature a goat. Only, this is no ordinary goat – you see, it’s purple, and also happens to have been imprisoned for witchcraft.
What follows is a bunch of single-screen puzzles where you leap about, triggering switches that shift walls, all the while trying to figure out your way to the exit. You’re not alone either – you also team up with a friendly hamster, who you can teleport to with the aid of a magic hat. Because of course you can.
Man, 1980s games were weird.
EXPERIMENTAL SHOOTER
The premise here is straightforward: use your mouse to control a swivelling gun turret, shoot the floating balls, and clear levels. But each stage shakes things up in a totally different way, meaning you’ll have to use your wits about you as much as your trigger finger. Examples? Well, one level is essentially a big pool table, while another only has your shots count once they’ve rebounded off the arena’s walls.
FIST OF AWESOME
For some reason, bears have taken over the world, and it falls to a bearded lumberjack to put right what’s clearly gone very wrong.
Initially, you punch your way through Bearhattan, in a manner PETA would vehemently disagree with. (That said, the local eateries are advertising ‘flame-grilled human flesh’.) You’re then hurled back in time, kicking dinosaurs and cavebears to bits, before quite literally going medieval.
GAME OF BOMBS
Game of Bombs transforms Bomberman into a massively multiplayer online retro arcade experience. The premise remains the same as ever: amble about, set bombs to take out walls and monsters, get away from the bombs so they don’t blow you to pieces, and collect whatever’s found in the retro carnage. The difference here is in the giant maps, and being able to bomb (or team up with) people from all over the world. And remember: if in doubt, RUN AWAY!
GOOD IMPRESSION
This one simulates the sheer panic clean-up that occurs when your mother shows up unannounced, and your flat appears to have had an unfortunate incident involving garbage, laundry and high explosives.
Hopefully, your own abode isn’t quite as grim as this student hovel filled with unwashed pants and bits of pizza. Regardless, you’ve three minutes to get everything shipshape.
Don’t think you can just hide everything either – this game’s mum dishes out report cards for cleanliness, and won’t stand for cold pizza in the washing machine.
GRIDLAND
Gridland resembles a typical match-three puzzler, but is really something else entirely. However, this only becomes clear after a few failed attempts to work through day (building structures with your earnings) and then battle evil horrors in the darkness as night falls.
To say more would spoil a great game, but there is one tip to bear in mind: if you too often die, change your approach. Day and night are very different beasts.
IMPOSSIBLE MISSION
Another visitor! Stay a while! Stay FOREVARRRRR! If you once owned a C64, Professor Elvin Atombender’s deranged rant may well be burned into your brain; even if you’re a newcomer, look past the blocky graphics and you’ll find Impossible Mission is one of the best platform games around.
Your aim as a somersaulting secret agent is to search Atombender’s fortress for puzzle pieces that form a password; this is then compiled in a control room, as a means to halt armageddon. Unfortunately, the agent is a buffoon and his only defence against the deadly robots that roam the fortress’s platforms is to run away or leap over them, rather than blowing them to pieces with a really big gun.
INFINITE MARIO BROS
Apparently originally put together by the bloke that did Minecraft, Infinite Mario Bros is a semi-randomised and theoretically endless Nintendo-lawyer-baiting platformer. As ever, it features everyone’s favourite rotund plumber leaping about, grabbing bling, and doing unspeakably violent things to bipedal turtles who were just minding their own business.
The difference from ‘normal Mario Bros’ is when you finish a level, you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get next. Well, that and Infinite Mario Bros appears to omit a score and quite a lot of the polish you get in real Mario games. Still, as a free Marioish game in your browser, it tides you over until you can settle down with the real thing.
INVADER OVERLOAD
The original Space Invaders is a classic, and one of the most important videogames of all time – but it’s also really dull. Taito long ago figured out doddering aliens and sluggish bullets isn’t an exciting combination, hence ramping up the speed and chaos for Space Invaders Extreme, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, and Arkanoid vs Space Invaders.
Invader Overload riffs off of the first of those, but as if it was on a NES. It’s fast, furious, endless, and welds a basic match game to the mix – grab three coloured blocks in a row and you can unleash superweapon death on the alien scumbags. Grab enough coins and there are bosses to battle, too.
JUMP DOPER
Seemingly depicting extreme skipping combined with surrealist torture, one-thumb acton game Jump Doper finds various objects tasked with endlessly leaping over a deadly swinging rope. Duff timing results in a bloody splat as a piece of said object is sliced away, like salami.
If you’re fortunate, your hobbled cactus or partly decapitated car will be able to continue for a bit. If not, just be glad whatever skipping humiliation you once suffered likely didn’t involve abrupt dismemberment.
KINGDOM RUSH
This one’s a tower defence game in which you have to build fortifications to fend off waves of ever-stronger bad guys. There’s a fantasy setting, which means archers, knights, wizards and so on are your staples as you attempt to hold back hordes of goblins, orcs, ogres and bandits. As you progress, you gain stars to upgrade towers and counter the increasing threat levels. If you like your strategy games fairly casual and cutesy (not to mention free and not too time-consuming), Kingdom Rush fits the bill like a tailor-made suit (of armour).
LITTLE ALCHEMY 2
Fancy trying your hand at browser-based ‘science’? Then fire up Little Alchemy 2, which charges you with synthesising hundreds of items. You start with the bare basics (air, earth, and so on), but are soon figuring out what you might get by combining any pair for ants, caviar, a puddle and an ostrich.
This isn’t exactly Breaking Bad, then, and nor do the solutions resemble what you’d find in textbooks. Instead, the game has you think laterally, whimsically, or even surreally, to find combinations. A plane, for example, is a metal bird. Obvious, when you think about it…
MOBS, INC.
When muscle-bound hunks and dapper wizards blaze their way through dungeons, no-one thinks of the minions – but providing a challenge to adventurers is a full-time job. More specifically, it’s your job.
In Mobs, Inc., there are loads of do-gooder sword-wielding nutters about, and you must kill them all, using your mouse to direct your movement, and a click to satisfyingly slice them in two.
Do well and you’re promoted, which means more work – but armed with spells. Die and you get a ticking off from the boss, before being hurled back into the fray. Get killed four times, and you’re fired. Given that your boss seems to be a massive demon, we shudder to think what that means.
MONOLITH
This stylish greyscale shooter finds your ship zooming towards a monolith on the horizon that suspiciously never seems to get any nearer. (Games, eh?) Naturally, said monolith is heavily armed.
You can shoot back, but only after your rubbish missile system has locked on. So begins a ‘hyperkinetic’ game of bullet hell patterns, cunning feints, and locking on to enemies to unleash explosive missile death. (All, in each case, for one miserly point. Bah.)
MONSIV
Given that a game of chess can last ages, a pared-down browser version seems like a good idea. And that’s Monsiv, which limits you to a five-by-five board and a handful of new pieces.
Your army now consists of a throne, two crosses and two angels. Each can move only in specific directions, and only one space at a time. You lose if your throne is captured, or if you repeat a board configuration.
Despite its streamlined nature, Monsiv is challenging and compelling, and if you tire of standard matches, you can instead chew your way through level-based quests.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
PANDEMIC 2
Many games have you play as the bad guy. But Pandemic 2 invites you to eradicate all human life on Earth. You set the parameters of your virus, and let time take its course – and the disease always wins.
The aim is to be as efficient as possible. Along the way, as you rack up evolution points, you can make your pathogen even more lethal, shortly before nipping to Amazon for one of those germ masks.
PAPER.IO
Sort of Tron meets Painter, Paper.io plonks you in an arena, aiming to secure as much territory as possible. The problem is everyone else is trying to do the same thing.
You grab land by zooming away from your plot and encircling a section of the arena. But your tail is a weak spot – if someone runs over it, you die. Still, you can cut down on the competition by gunning for their tails, too.
QUICK, DRAW
Fancy yourself something of an artist? Put your sketching skills to the test in this devilish AI-based take on Pictionary, in which you’re tasked to draw everyday objects (‘fire engine’, ‘clarinet’, ‘frying pan’, and so on) and have them recognised by Google’s deep learning-based judge. If your crude scrawling hits the mark, you get to draw another one, again and again, until you fail.
QWOP
The physics of walking on two legs is an astoundingly complex affair. Running is even worse – in essence, a barely-controlled fall. Because we’ve all forgotten when we learned how to do those things, we don’t think about this kind of thing – but QWOP brings it all back.
This astoundingly frustrating game gives you control of a runner’s leg muscles using just four keys on your keyboard (Q, W, O and P). The objective is to not land on your bum or face – which it turns out is practically impossible.
SPACEPLAN
A prototype for the more recent PC and mobile release of the same name, Spaceplan is a clicker. You click, click, click, and get to spend generated currency (watts) on things that start doing the clicking for you. Eventually, you’re generating millions of clicks per second. And also everything’s centred around potatoes.
Yes, Spaceplan has a narrative that revolves around a quirky AI, something having gone very wrong in (and with) space, and an awful lot of spuds. You fling Spudnik satellites into orbit, and use Probetatoes to land on planetary bodies, ensuring they’re wrapped in foil to withstand re-entry – and fan-assisted ovens. All entirely scientifically accurate, we’re sure.
SPELUNKY
Originally a tasty slice of PC freeware, Spelunky then became a darling of the PS Vita indie scene. It’s easy to see why: the mix of traps, monsters, route-finding and secrets, and fast-paced classic platforming action across randomly generated maps, is intoxicating stuff.
The original was in 2012 reworked for the browser, and remains superb fun – although you might disagree when your cute little adventurer is suddenly shot out of the air with a poison dart or clubbed to death by an irate caveman.
THREES!
For many, Threes! is mobile’s Tetris – a ridiculously compulsive and replayable puzzler ideally suited to smartphones, and that ravenously devours your time. And it’s available online, too, so thanks for that, developers. Does our productivity mean nothing to you? (Probably not.)
The game has you swipe numbered tiles around a four-by-four grid, merging pairs to increase their numbers. You might say that sounds an awful lot like 2048, but 2048 is in fact a rubbish clone of Threes!, so stick with the original, and blissfully ignore all those deadlines whizzing past your ears.
TREASURE ARENA
Dipping its toes into several retro pools, Treasure Arena is essentially an arena shooter that really wants to be an old-school dungeon crawler on the SNES.
It certainly looks the part, with its chunky pixel graphics. And there’s an immediacy that recalls classic arcade fare, with you darting about dungeons, picking up coins and power-ups, before heading into the fray to duff up anyone nearby.
TYPESHIFT
This superb word game subverts crosswords, having you drag columns of letters about to colour tiles. When all the tiles are coloured, you can bask in your ability to pick words out of a jumble – or methodically brute-force answers when you can’t find the final word.
A trio of themed web-only puzzles is available on the TypeShift website; beyond those, there’s a daily puzzle over at the home of dictionary gurus Merriam-Webster. And although one puzzle per day might not seem like much, some of them are tricky enough to demand an entire lunch hour.
WAVE RUN
This fast-paced platformer is a smart time-attack challenge that has you sprint and fly through 33 levels, grabbing as many trophies as you can along the way.
The gameplay might seem a touch familiar, but everything here is top-notch: chunky retro graphics; jaunty soundtrack; responsive controls and well-judged physics when jetpacking through the air; and tight level design that forces you to pay attention if you don’t want to keep getting impaled on spikes.
WIZARD OF WOR
Wizard Of Wor appears to be a browser-based remake of a C64 conversion of an ancient arcade game! Which is a bit weird. It’s a fantastic old-school title, though, where you roam claustrophobic mazes and blast monsters before they tear your face off. Best of all, there’s a simultaneous two-player mode. Hit Shift and player one (blue) can use AWSD and Shift, while player two (yellow) uses the cursors and Enter. Given that you can ‘accidentally’ shoot each other, too, either of you can then use the entire keyboard to smack your opponent with.
Note: use Firefox for this one.
WONDERPUTT
You’ve probably had your fill of mini-golf games on your PC and handhelds, but giveWonderputt a go anyway, because it’s like someone took the genre, got Escher and Gilliam to bang heads about how to design a course, and filtered the end result through the talents of a first-rate digital artist.
Initially, your little ball tonks about a simple hole comprising four discs, but then the entire landscape dramatically shifts and transforms again and again, with astonishing transitions that will make you grin like a loon unless you’re dead inside.
WORLD’S BIGGEST PAC MAN
Built to promote the original Pac-Man’s 30th anniversary (they grow up so fast!), World’s Biggest Pac-Man makes two major changes to the original title. First, the two wraparound tunnels are replaced by four doorways, one at each screen edge, enabling you to escape to another maze. Secondly, the creators enabled anyone to submit mazes. Within a week, there were over 10,000. Now there are hundreds of thousands – enough to last even the most ardent dot-muncher several lifetimes.
WORM FOOD
In the film Tremors, Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward repel an attack of giant subterranean slug-beasts that rear up out of the earth and devour a selection of citizens from a small American town. In Worm Food, Tremors goes interactive. And you get to be the slug.
Pick up momentum by accelerating through the soil, break through the surface, and scoop up as many townsfolk as you can before the timer runs out. Crashing into buildings and other obstacles slows you down, and in later levels your prey fights back, planting land-mines in your path.
Ccleaner Pro Apk You can clean your phone .
ReplyDeleteHave you tried this new app buddhify Apk : this is really great.
ReplyDelete